Sunday evening, April 23.	The vario doesn't show up well in this scan, but its reading of 3079 AGL shows that this April 30th was a great day at Big Walker.
No scorched earth here. Just a thin red line.	I tried to get a picture of Jim's house, but the boots blocked the shot.

The Big Walker ridge.

And this is where it is on the map.

"I was cold and there was lift everywhere, I had to core the sink to get down". Tammy, paraphrasing
Aaah, it was a great morning for soaring at Big Walker. Phil, Bill, Tom, and I converged in the LZ just before 8am this morning. The wind was blowing on launch just like the reports said -- beautifully, but a hair on the light side. We all launched and got sled runs or extended sled runs. Andrew and Larry had shown up meanwhile. Back on top, Tom launched but just barely missed the cycle. I was lucky enough to launch into a great cycle and quickly zipped up to 1200 ft AGL. Bill also launched, and we both climbed up to the 2000-3000 ft range. The thermals were the biggest, fattest thermals I'd ever been in. You didn't have to do 360's. You could fly straight for quite a while and eventually turn back to follow them a bit more. Of course you don't stay in the core like this, but with those big thermals lift was pretty easy to come by. At 2000 AGL the air was chilly, and above 3000 AGL it was downright cold. With the monster thermals, we could pop up into the chilly air, come back down to about 1500 to warm up a bit, and pop back up. It was awesome! But I now I see how a flight suit would really help, even on warm days. About noon, I decided it had gotten to rowdy for me and headed out to land. I was at 2800, and arrived at the LZ around 3300 over launch. I'd gained 500 ft without trying. Getting down was a trick. When I finally made it down to a few hundred over the LZ and was planning my approach, I got popped back up to 200 ft over launch. Wow! And I was avoiding lift, though I found my instincts following it a bit. I had to concentrate to avoid it. Good thing for big ears. I was the lowest of the three pg pilots that were flying in the late morning at only around 3300. Bill was up around 3500, and Andre was somewhere around 4-6000 (with the meters and the MSL reading on his vario, we were all quite challenged to figure out how high he'd gotten). I blew away my previous personal best altitude. The hang gliders that launched after us zipped up into the very cold temperatures. Hang gliders seem to have a knack for finding the sky. The day is not over, so I guess this report is a bit premature. Just thought I'd report on the morning. Kermon	It looks as though I`m the first to report on the evening flying at Big Walker. I should start by repeating Tim`s predictions on the way there. Quote "Ricky this is going to be an awesome evening of flying, just like last Sunday". Boy did he ever nail it. It was better than last Sunday. As always on a day like today, the hang gliders was in their glory. They was launching right before the pg`s started taking to the air with no trouble getting up at all. I was third off the mountain only to break most of my personal records (the good ones). Immediately off of launch it was up, up and away. I gain 400 feet in front of launch without even trying hard at all. Then it was off to the right to gain and lose altitude for a while until I found a thermal that landed me at 800 over. I seemed to stay at 600 to 800 over for the longest time, wondering if this was the max altitude for the day. One look up in the sky and I knew better. There was Bill totally skied out and Tim climbing up to greet him. It was time to search a little harder for the bigger thermals. And boy did I find them. The first one, I remember breaking the 1000 mark. Then it was 1100, 1200, and the big 1300 to surpass my best of 1220. It didn`t end there though. With steady climb rate from several thermals, I was at 1780 when I found the huge thermal. In my mind, thermals wasn`t suppose to be this big. Flying back and forth in this baby was totally awesome. The steady beep from the vario seemed to go on forever. I followed it over the ridge a little ways to top out at 3015 feet over. It wasn`t long before I started shivering from the cold. I wished I had watched the vario for the tempature. By the time I decended back to the ridge I was the only on in the air and the light was getting dimmer. There was no lift at all on the ridge, which left me slightly disappointed. I was hoping to fly in the glass off for a while. My landing could have been better. I arrived at the LZ really high and played around to set up for the appoach. I played in the sink to long and failed to make my target spot. Oh well, I`ll have to work on that. All in all it was a great evening of flying. It was great to fly with all the pilots that evening. My understanding is that a lot of previous records was surpassed yesterday. To all the pilots who went home early. All I can say is Shame, Shame , Shame. Ricky
Steve Conner and I arrived for the 3rd wave of flying Sunday. Kermon gave a good report of the morning flying. The Sauratown HG pilots and Randy (the 2nd wave) had all landed, and the PG contingent was sitting on launch waiting for things to die down again. Steve and I launched a little after 5:30, with a PG pilot between us (didn't catch the name). We got up easily enough, and eventually went to the left of launch, but didn't really find much over there, maybe 4-800 over most of the time. It wasn't long before PG's started piling off launch, led, I believe, by Bill Jenkins. I do know Bill had a knack for finding the thermals that evening - my first good gain of the day came after seeing him climbing to the right of launch and joining in the thermal he had found. I forget where Steve went right then, but Bill was on down the ridge to the right announcing his intentions to go XC. I headed down where he was to check it out, and he found us another big juicy one - my vario averager had readings of over 1000 fpm at one point, and it stayed above 600 fpm for quite awhile. Steve came on the radio saying he had found something similar back up the ridge, and he eventually topped that out at 4800 over launch (this guy has got no respect - I taught him to fly HG's back around '85, and he has been burning me ever since). At one point I watched Bill drift back behind the mountain, thinking maybe he was heading for the back ridge. From where I was it looked like he was back about halfway across the valley, but that may have been just how it looked from where I was - anyhow, I was surprised to look again in a little while to see that he had penetrated back out to the front of Walker - I didn't know a PG could penetrate that good! I had been sort of following along to provide a spotter in case his XC ended up a little short, but at that point I figured he wasn't going to have any trouble going a lot further. In the meantime Steve was boating up the valley in front of Walker, on his way to High Rock at about 3500 over. I headed back in that direction to join him, until I ran into a nice big thermal back behind launch. Not a very high climb rate, but after about 10 minutes or so I got to a little over 4300 above (7500+ MSL). I didn't want to waste that altitude with a ridge run, so I decided to see how far out upwind I could get (and I was also hoping to lose some altitude in the process - it was getting cold up there). Made it out onto the ridge on the far side of Rt 42 (just down from the prison), and was still about 3200 above. I guess I should have tried going further upwind, but I had already crossed 3 small ridges and didn't want to run into sink and not make it back to the LZ. I wish. Lost hardly anything on the way back, and now I was really getting chilly. No defined areas of lift, but the vario just kept up with a little string of beeps, and I wasn't going down any. I did run into one nice thermal again, and out of reflex I just had to turn in it. But that sure wasn't heading for warmer, so like a wino getting off the bottle, I just had to force myself to leave it. There were a lot of PG's on the ridge at this time, but then we saw one find a good thermal and climbed up to where Steve and I were - and we soon figured out from the radio that it was Ricky. Looking good, man! The sun was getting low, and I still wasn't getting any lower (or warmer). Finally I heard some brief, but very welcome beeps from the sink alarm. Turn! Turn! I couldn't get the sink alarm to stay on, but at least I had found enough sink that I could turn in it and lose altitude! What an evening! I was 4300 over at 7:15, and was still having a hard time getting down to land by 8:00. Richard	Hey Randy! Thanks for the launch assist, and as always the hospitality! I maxed at over 8.5k asl, Jeff got to 9.2k at least once. We saw 1k fpm and better a couple of times. The reasons I didnt go was were: 1- no clouds, the few that developed dissapated very quickly. 2- at times there were considerable time spans with no thermals. 3- This smooth as silk stuff must have been after we landed. We all got our butts kicked, particularly the leading edge of the thermals seemed almost violently turbulent. The rigging on my wing actually "twanged" once. Thats why Jake landed. He felt he didnt have enough time on the Atos to handle the crap he was getting. I did notice that during the last half hour of my flight it started to get smoother. 4- Jeff dind't go. Thanks again! (post this if you like) Mike
	Hey, I just thought I'd add these reports here. I like going back and reading them and reliving the day. Thought you might enjoy that, too. The Webmaster